He had options to move but he’s taken the pay day and the easy ride. What were people really expecting him to end up doing? While he was the goalscoring supersub he had value but there’s no way he was going to be that player for the entirety of his new contract.

He signed a new contract while he wasn’t playing and with no sign of really getting himself into the team, and I thought he made it pretty clear that he wanted to stay in London which for me is the easy ride.

He gets in the French team without regular club football so there isn’t really pressure in that sense for him to move on.

He could have gone to Everton with a guaranteed starting XI place. But he chose to stay because apparently his “story with Arsenal is not yet finished”. I’m interested to see how this book ends to be honest, hoping for a good twist.

Plenty of signs he can get in the team. Wenger rotates frequently and openly says they are on the same level (or something).

He’s not valued by Wenger the way a number one striker should be. When he was fit RvP played every single game he was available for. As was Henry and any other main striker at any top club except for the rare freak scenarios like the Higuain / Benzema rotation.

Giroud was “rotated” for Walcott and Welbeck for a bit, then he was flat out replaced by Sanchez and now Lacazette. This season he’s started zero out of ten Premier League games. That’s not simply rotation, he’s deliberately second choice. It was the same story for the first half of last season too.

When Wenger shuffled the team to put Alexis up front and exclude Giroud should have been the time that he considered his options. He did and he’s decided he’s happy to be second choice, so I don’t see what’s wrong in questioning the mentality of someone who decides to be second choice consistently performing as a backup. Very few players ever truly excel in that role and even if Giroud was excellent in that role for the first 4 months of it, I can’t see him keeping that up for 3 years.

He was inconsistent as a starter so it’s no surprise to me that he’s not going to deliver every single time he’s called upon as a backup. He’s not going to be MOTM and scoring a double against every EL team even though he’s obviously better than anything the opposition can offer.

Such a waste keeping him around here, paying his wages just so he can take minutes away from Nketiah (and worse, sometimes from Lacazette) when he’s useless without really quality players around him (and even then, sometimes useless as well). Obvious piece of business to sell him in the summer and we couldn’t do it. I know he wanted to stay but surely Wenger could’ve given him a stronger pitch to leave, or if he did stay against his wishes there is no reason to make such an effort to make him happy to the detriment of the club.

I think Wenger kept hold of him in case Lacazette didn’t work out.
Giroud is a decent enough striker for a mid table team, and the fact he has been first choice for us for over five seasons says more about Wenger’s lack of ambition than it does about Giroud’s limited ability.

He does earn a lot for a second choice player but then so do Walcott, Wilshere and Welbeck and others.
So unless all of a sudden Wenger is going to change his outlook on buying players and not persisting with underperforming ones, then he might as well stay here, because there aren’t many better second choice strikers in Europe.